


blood and bone, love and hunger

by panderegla



Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Fae Magic, Horror-ish, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, POV Second Person, and alfyn is the absolute idiot who falls in love with him, therion is a fae-like creature or monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27383917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panderegla/pseuds/panderegla
Summary: You fall in love with a boy in the woods - a beautiful, otherworldly boy with glowing eyes who smells of the forest and of old blood.Is this a story of love or hunger? You decide.
Relationships: Alfyn Greengrass/Therion
Comments: 18
Kudos: 32





	blood and bone, love and hunger

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> this is my attempt at writing something horror-ish and creepy for halloween. yes i've never written anything horror-like before and it's too late for halloween now but here have it anyway before i banish it to my drafts forever

“There’s a boy in the woods.”

Your mother’s eyes go impossibly wide as you tell her this with all your gap-toothed innocence, still a child of only a few winters who did not yet know the world beyond the little riverside village you called home.

“What?”

“There’s a boy in the woods,” you repeat, and you have the nerve to sigh a little in exasperation, not understanding why your mother is asking you for clarification when you know that she heard you clear as day the first time.

Your mother is silent, lips parted as her eyes rove up and down your face, taking in every little detail from the scratch on your cheek to the bruise on your forehead, searching for a lie. She grabs your hands and inspects the callouses and the dirt beneath your fingernails before turning her attention to the gash on your knee, covered in your dried blood.

“Was he the one who hurt you?” she asks.

You shake your head. “I got lost and I tripped and fell down. He found me and he helped me. He showed me the way out. But he wouldn’t come out of the woods with me.”

Your mother purses her lips before she takes you by the hand towards the kitchen to get your wound cleaned up, sitting you down on a low stool while she kneels in front of you with a bottle of that stinky disinfectant that makes your wound sting and makes you cry even when you promised you wouldn’t. All the while your mother works with an unusually grim silence.

As soon as the bandage is in place and the wound no longer smarts as bad as it used to, you get up from your seat, a hasty little thing so eager to be out and about again, but your mother pushes you back down onto the stool and tells you to stay while she rummages around in her kitchen, opening and closing the cupboards in search of something. Finally, she comes back to you with a fistful of yellow flowers – St. John’s Wort, she calls them – and tucks it into the front pocket of your tunic.

She hands you a small metal brooch of hers, a token from your long-dead father, then tells you to wait for her outside. You do as you’re told but not without its fair share of grumbling. After what feels like forever to your young impatient mind, your mother comes out of the house carrying something wrapped in plant leaves and tied up with straw. She kneels down in front of you and presses it into your arms as if it were fragile.

But oh does it smell – even worse than the disinfectant! You take the wrapped package with a scrunch of your nose and ask her what’s inside. Your mother only shakes her head before she places both her hands on your shoulders and looks you square in the eyes.

“Listen to me,” she says and the tone of her voice suggests that what she’s about to tell you is serious business, so you keep your lips sealed tight and do as you’re told.

“You must go back to the woods,” she says. “Go back to where you saw him. Give this to him. You must not let him take it from you. You must set it down on the ground between you and wait till he picks it up himself. Then you turn around and come right back. Don’t worry ‘bout losing the way. As long as you have that brooch, you’ll find your way back here. It’s important that you come back as soon as he takes the offering. Do you understand?”

“Are you coming with me?” you ask.

Your mother smiles weakly. “I can’t go with you. You have to do this alone. Please,” your mother pleads. “Before it gets dark and the day ends.”

“Okay,” you say with a nod and for the first time your mother smiles. She ruffles your hair and kisses you on the forehead.

“Promise me that you’ll come right back before dark,” she says. “And promise me that you will never tell him your name, no matter what happens.”

“I promise.”

“Good.”

She watches you go from the open doorway, waving as you walk backwards, out of the village and past the edge of the woods where children like you were permitted to play. Past the giant rock with old names and dates chiseled on the surface by clumsy hands. Across the mossy tree that served as a bridge over the babbling brook that separated the land of the familiar from the deepest, darkest part of the woods where not even the bravest men of the village dare to go.

Here, the trees loom impossibly tall, their branches reaching out like thin skeletal fingers to cover all trace of the sky. There is no worn path, no clear-cut way through the woods to tell you where to go. Rocks and brambles and other debris litter the forest floor but somehow you manage – a thin and gangly thing like yourself, crawling and squeezing past the forest’s defenses, like a snake or a very persistent little squirrel.

And then, suddenly, all noise ceases.

The crickets that had till then kept you company, the cawing and chirping of the birds above, even the sound of your footsteps on the dirt.

All is still and silent.

The air becomes thin, a chill has set in, and although you shiver and chatter your teeth, although you feel as if there are eyes upon you, you walk ahead, knowing that you are close.

Before long, you come upon the small clearing again. The verdant grass, the wildflowers that bend their heads to some unseen breeze, the persistent feeling of being watched – it is just as you had left it a mere hour ago.

You blink and suddenly the boy is there where he hadn’t been a second ago. His hair is as white as the snow, like a dove’s feathers, and he wears a mantle of green leaves and moss. A pair of two-pronged antlers, white at the roots but tinged a rusty red at their sharp ends, grow from the top of his head. His skin is dark and cracked like pine bark and beneath his feathery hair, eyes as green as the grass – as dark and murky as pond water but as green as the forest itself – shine like a pair of gemstones.

You know him immediately by the curious yet cautious look he gives you – the same one he had given you when you first met – and the smell of old blood that lingers around him, faint in some places but there all the same.

You smile, because your mother always told you to smile when you’re greeting people. “Hi,” you say and walk into the clearing with confidence that only a child could have. “I brought a gift.”

You place the leafy offering down on the ground, like your mother had told you to, and step back. The boy approaches you warily. His feet are light, making absolutely no sound as he walks over the grass. It doesn’t occur to you till he’s standing in front of you that you’re about the same height. Maybe you’re a little taller than him, a detail you note with pride, but his antlers certainly add to his diminutive height.

He stops in front of the offering and this is the first time that you notice. His eyes – they glow. Not just green, but gold and silver all at the same time. Or are they white? Or light blue? Or even a color that you’ve never seen before? But whatever color they really are, they regard you blankly before bending down and reaching for the offering.

You hold your breath as thin arms emerge from beneath the mantle, as twig-like fingers pull at the string tying it all together and unwraps the package, pulling apart layer after layer to reveal a cut of bleeding raw meat at the center.

That explains the smell. You pinch your nose in reflex, unable to tear your eyes away from the boy, who looks up at you with an unreadable expression before he bends his head and starts to eat.

You stand there frozen, forgetting what your mother had told you, forgetting where you are or what time it is, thinking only of the wet sound of tearing flesh, of the boy’s harsh chewing, of the short and fleeting glimpse of sharp incisors before they sink into tender red meat.

You don’t know if this is fear or fascination, but you always thought those two were connected to each other somehow.

When the boy finishes his meal, he wipes the blood from his lips then stands and stares at you, as if waiting for something. You blink and whatever feeling had been keeping you paralyzed till then disappears. You stumble backwards, your mother’s words returning to you in a rush, but you don’t dare turn your back on the boy. Not when he’s walking towards you with a purpose, the corners of his mouth still red.

He reaches a hand out towards you, slow and hesitant, then he quickly recoils, eyes staring at the bright yellow flowers on the front of your tunic. There’s a sound like the rustling of leaves, a sensation like a blustering wind on a cool autumn day, and when you open your eyes, the boy is gone and you’re back on the right side of the brook, staring across the tree bridge towards the darkness on the other side.

Above, the sky is pitch black and the crescent moon hangs high and bright like a lantern. But the only light you see are the boy’s eyes, watching you from across the water. They blink and then they’re gone and you’re not sure how long you stand there staring at where they had been only moments ago before you turn and slouch back towards the village.

You hear the voices calling your name before you see them. You see the torchlights in the distance and hear the sound of running feet and as soon as you’re in sight of them, your mother rushes forward and scoops you into her arms, sounding both angry and relieved as she tells you that you’ve been gone for hours, longer than what you had promised her, and she makes you swear up and down never to do that to her again.

You don’t tell her about the boy, or about the offering. You only say that you’re sorry before you’re sent to bed without dinner. But whatever appetite you had before you entered the woods has been gone since you left it, since you laid eyes on the boy in the woods and watched him devour your offering right in front of you.

Sometime after you had tucked yourself into bed, you hear a noise outside your bedroom window. The crackling of leaves. A soft breeze through the branches. A short and tentative tap on the glass. Right before you close your eyes, you see a shadow pass by, and then it’s gone, and you dream of the clearing, of autumn leaves and tree sap, of bright yellow flowers and the boy in the woods standing outside your window.

You discover the line of salt on your windowsill in the morning when it’s light enough to notice it. You bide your time till the late afternoon. You don’t tell your mother, or any of your friends. You leave the St. John’s Wort at home, along with your mother’s brooch, and you set off for the woods with a sureness in your step, with a foolish kind of bravery.

Past the giant rock, across the brook, deeper into the forest than anyone’s ever been.

You walk and walk and walk until your feet are tired. But you don’t stop until you reach the clearing. And without even having to call for him, as if he could sense how much you want to see him, the boy is there, staring at you from between a pair of pine trees with his glowing eyes and cautious expression.

You grin and reach out your hand, bold and empty. The boy approaches, slinking out of the shadows to extend his own hand forward, hesitating for the briefest moment before his fingers twine around yours as if they had always belonged there.

His touch is cold and you flinch as if someone had dropped ice cubes on your open palm, but soon, you get accustomed to it, and before you know it, the boy is leading you deeper into the woods.

Past the clearing, through a long row of pine trees, to where a crystal-clear stream flows from a yawning cavern, and mushrooms and toadstools grow out of the ground as abundant as wildflowers. He doesn’t hurry, doesn’t rush, only pulls you along after him with a kind of timid patience, and you let him.

You let him show you were the grass turns blue and the mushrooms grow big enough for you to sit on them. Let him lead you to where the branches of the trees grow so close together that you can no longer see the sunlight. Let him take you to where the chirping of birds and buzzing of insects is replaced by the disembodied yet ever-present sound of children’s laughter always somewhere nearby.

There are trees you’ve never seen before, oddly colored berries that you’ve never tried, glowing creatures that move just beyond the line of trees on either side of you the likes of which you could only ever dream of.

You don’t know what it is about this place that has you so enraptured, so willing to follow along to wherever the boy leads you. But the scent of blood still surrounds him, more pronounced the closer you are to him, and it’s the stomach-churning smell of it that reminds you of the offering you had made not so long ago, of your mother’s words and the yellow flowers that you had left at home.

You tug on the boy’s hand and dig your heels in the dirt and tell him that you want to go home.

“I’m tired,” you say. “I wanna see my mama. Take me back home.”

The boy stops and stares back at you with the same blank expression he’s always worn and you wonder if he even understands a word you’re saying. But slowly, he squeezes your hand and leads you back the way you came, following a hidden path that twists and turns and swerves like a snake. Even though you get the feeling that you are going back, you don’t see the same scenery twice. And then you blink and you’re back at the clearing, the sound of children giggling disappearing just as abruptly.

The boy lets go of your hand and he stays at the center of the clearing and watches you leave. The light of his glowing eyes remain behind you for a long time, a pair of white orbs that seem to float in the air every time you look back, but as soon as you cross the tree bridge, they’re gone and you look up at a strange sight – the leaves of the trees, the light green of summer when you had left, are now the red and orange of fall, and the air is crisp and cool, bringing with it the scent of petrichor and decay.

Everyone stops and stares at you with wide eyes and open mouths when you enter the village. A crowd soon grows around you as loud voices demand to know where you’ve been and why it’s taken you so long to come back to them. You manage to squeeze out and run to your house, your heart beating like a rabbit’s in your chest, and when you reach your house, your heart sinks at the sight of it, at the decrepit dirt-clod walls and the untamed garden with weeds growing past your own head.

Your mother sits at the table with her head in her hands when you enter and the moment she sees you, her sunken eyes light up and she runs to embrace you, her bony arms holding you close to her as she weeps and weeps and asks you where you went for the last three years.

The St. John’s Wort you had left lies dead and brown and surrounded by dust on the table, at the exact spot you had left it.

****

When you see the boy in the woods again, he is no longer a boy, and neither are you.

Since the day of your return from your three-year disappearance, your mother has forbidden you from going back to the clearing, back to the deepest part of the woods where no one has been to since. You dare not cross the tree bridge again, even as the scenery beyond beckons you, even as some part of you is drawn to it just as it had drawn you in so long ago.

Your apprenticeship as an apothecary often takes you into the woods, close to the tree bridge and the brook that spans the border between your realm and that otherworldly place the boy had taken you to. Sometimes you lie awake at night and wonder if everything you had seen had all just been a delirious fever dream or a memory that your bored childhood mind had made up and convinced yourself had been real. But you still remember so clearly the metallic scent of the boy in the woods and the icy coldness of his hand in yours and you believe that a part of the story is real.

There had been a boy in the woods and there had been an offering of flesh and blood and you had seen it. You had seen him.

Your mother would have you believe that it been nothing more than a childish flight of fancy, an idea of yours that she had gone along with for the sake of humoring you and your make-believe fantasies, but you know better.

There is still salt on your windowsill and there is still a fleeting shadow that appears on dark nights when the moon is full, that presses their cold hand against the glass and watches you with glowing eyes when they think that you’re asleep.

Very soon, you can’t resist it. The woods pull you in like a magnet. Sometimes when you’re close enough, you can hear it – a voice that seems to call for you without even saying your name, coming from deep within the forest. Most days you can ignore it and go about your business, taking what you needed from the woods and returning to your aged mother with the herbs you had promised.

But some days, especially during the fall, when the days become shorter and the nights darker, it’s like staying awake when you haven’t slept for days – futile and tantalizing.

And then one day, it all becomes too much.

The leaves crunch under your boots as you follow the familiar path. You had told your mother that you were only going out to forage for some mushrooms and she had believed you for the most part. Clutched tightly in your hand is a sprig of St. John’s Wort, plucked fresh from your garden where your mother had planted some after you had disappeared. You have your axe with you, iron like your mother’s brooch, honed to near perfection with a whetstone the night before.

You pass the giant rock, the names that had been etched into it now faded and ineligible. You reach the tree bridge and test the rotting wood, wondering for a second if it will hold, before you decide to risk it and make it to the other side safely.

The air is immediately different here, thinner yet colder at the same time, and you wish you had brought some warmer clothes. But there is no more turning back after this, at least not until you’re ready to turn back, and without another backwards glance, you forge ahead into the woods that have haunted you for years.

You don’t know how you find it, whether by sheer dumb luck or by the memory of your feet or by some other nameless force pulling you forward, but you arrive at the clearing and it’s just as you had left it all those years ago. The same green grass, the same wildflowers that had always grown there. Even the trees that line it are unchanged. No new branches, no leaves shifting colors in accordance to the season.

But it’s empty and it’s quiet. There’s no wind, no birds, no creatures, not even the sound of your own breathing.

Then something moves at the edge of the clearing and it sends goosebumps across your skin, makes your hairs stand on end, sends a chill down the nape of your neck, as you feel a pair of eyes on you and hear the subtle rustling of leaves.

You turn and there he is.

No longer a boy.

But whether he grows with time just like you or had only adapted a similar form as you, you don’t know.

He moves into the clearing with the same silent grace as before, treading so lightly that his feet don’t make a sound. His eyes glow with the same colorful multiplicity and the antlers growing out of his stark white hair are longer, bigger and much more elaborate, the redness at the tips now more pronounced in a richer, darker shade. The mantle he drapes over himself is made of purple and reddish leaves and moss, so different from the green you remember him in, but you think that it suits him, standing out amid his dark brown tree bark skin.

And there’s one other thought that strikes you the moment you see him, one thought that rises above the others and freezes you in place. You don’t remember if you had ever thought this about him before, if it had ever occurred to you even vaguely when you were younger, but seeing him now, you think – he is beautiful.

He always has been, you realize, that otherworldly alienness of his features only lending to his beauty, and it had only taken you this long to see it.

He stops and looks at you, waiting. You look away briefly, if only to keep yourself from staring at him, before you reach into your satchel and produce your offering, a choice cut of pork you had bought from the butcher earlier, wrapped up in herbs and leaves and tied with a string of twine. You walk forward three steps, lay it down on the ground between you, then take exactly three steps backward. You smile at him and he seems to recognize you, eyes taking on a new look to them.

He walks forward and stares down at your offering. The scent of blood that follows him hits you then, gradual at first then all at once like an ocean wave. You try not to gag but it’s gotten stronger since you saw him last and it only serves to remind you of what he is – not human.

His forest green eyes regard you with caution, with warning, before he takes your offering – and hands it back to you. You glance between his face and the offering in bewilderment, but his expression is blank and determined. Slowly, you reach out and take it. Your fingers brush against his and although he doesn’t react, you know that even he has to feel the chill that spreads from the moment of contact, that both boils and freezes your blood at the same time.

You keep the offering into your satchel before you face him again. For a long time, you’re both motionless, until you give a small laugh and scratch the back of your neck. “I—” you begin but stop when he reaches out a hand towards you palm up. He doesn’t say anything; you’re not even entirely sure that he can. But you understand the gesture immediately.

You crush the Wort in your hand with one strong squeeze and he watches you discard its crumbled remains, letting it fall from your hand to the ground below. Your eyes meet and that same understanding passes between you two, unspoken yet true. You take his hand and what might have been a smile passes across his inhuman features.

You let him lead the way, as you had done all those years ago, past the clearing and deeper into the woods. But it’s not the same place he had taken you before.

Where before the scenery had been unnatural and eerie, now it only looks like the forest you had left behind. The trees grow taller here, the leaves darker, mist hangs low to the ground; but it’s not otherworldly. It only looks like another part of the forest, one that humankind has yet to touch.

He shows you where you can find mushrooms growing from tree stumps and rotten logs. He shows you where a river flows into a series of rapids, so deafening that you can’t even hear your own thoughts. He shows you where it’s safe to swim, where little fish like to hide, where the rocks aren’t mossy and slippery and just sturdy enough to step across. He shows you where owls hoot from their roosts in the meager daylight that passes through, their large yellow eyes following the both of you with interest. He shows you trees that could fit entire houses in them, plants that grow in all directions and reach way above your head, flowers of different colors and unusual shapes with scents that you’ve never heard of.

The forest is a strange land to you. The air gets thicker with every step deeper you take into it, enough to almost be oppressive. You feel like an outsider, like a trespasser, like you’re not supposed to be here where no other human has been. But while you hold the boy’s icy hand, while you follow after him, stepping only where he steps, the forest opens up to you and tolerates your presence.

But it never stops watching you, and the sloping, uneven lay of the land starts to feel like the contours of a body. Deer trails and narrow dirt paths that branch off to your left and right start to look like veins. And what you had first assumed to be wind blowing through the trees starts to sound like breathing. As soon as you become aware of it, you can almost feel the earth beneath your feet rise up and down slow and steady with every breath, as if it were sleeping, as if it were dreaming.

But for some reason, you don’t feel frightened.

You are here with him and even without words, you know that you won’t be led astray in the heart of this dense, unfamiliar forest.

He belongs here in a way that you never will. He treads easily over the brambles, over rocks and tree roots, taking care not to disturb too much the natural order of the plants, flowers, vines and weeds that grow all over the ground. When he moves, he moves with the wind, never going against it or bending to its will, simply moving to accommodate it, not resisting but not completely giving in. Where the forest views you with suspicion and merely tolerates you, the forest welcomes him. The forest rises up to meet him and embraces him to its chest like a mother to its child.

Soon, you start to notice the sprouts that rise up wherever his foot falls, the vines that detach themselves from their trees to curl around his antlers and make a new home there, the subtle breeze that rises and falls in accordance to the arch of his hand and the smooth movement of his fingers. You have no doubt in your mind that he was born here. The forest is his home; and it loves him with all of its might.

Which is why, you realize, you cannot stay long.

You know that you are only here because of him, because he has allowed it. But just as he has a home here, you have a home somewhere else. Friends to return to, a mother to look after.

“I have to go back,” you tell him. He stops and looks at you, blank, before he takes you by the hand and leads you back. Just as before, you never pass the same scenery twice, and the trip back to the clearing is shorter than the trip away.

You tell him goodbye and offer a smile. Just as before, his eyes follow you all the way to the tree bridge, and it’s a comforting sight, knowing that he’s there watching your back all the way to the village.

You’re prepared to see a different sight once you cross the bridge. To see snow, or the first buds of spring, or perhaps, in the worst case, see only a ruin of the village you had left behind. But to your surprise, everything is exactly as it were when you left it. When you return to your house, your mother looks up from her rocking chair with wide eyes and tells you that you had just left not even five minutes ago.

Even when she presses you, you don’t tell her about where you’ve been, about the boy, about the forest, about why your hands are so cold to the touch, like you’ve been holding ice for a long time. You can tell that she doesn’t believe any of the excuses you tell her but her curiosity is momentarily sated when you bring out the pork you had bought and volunteer to cook it as a rare treat.

Once you’ve been inside the forest, the magnetic pull that had drawn you in only seems to grow stronger rather than waning as you had hoped. You manage to stay away from it for a time, enough to stop your mother from suspecting, but you’re never far from it for too long.

The boy meets you in the clearing every time, as if he has been waiting there every day for you, hoping that you’ll visit. Or perhaps that’s just what you hope. But you let yourself hope it all the same and if you believe that there’s another reason why he doesn’t let go of your hand once, you let yourself believe that too.

You no longer let silence dominate your time with him. As easily as if you are talking to one of your oldest friends, you find yourself talking to the boy about anything and everything at once. You speak of your village, of your friends, of your apprenticeship and the medicine you can concoct. And every time, the boy listens. He watches you while you walk, sits beside you when you decide to take a break by a stream, dipping your bare feet in the water while you go on and on about your life back home, a life you know he will never understand. But he listens to it all, perhaps only because there’s nothing else he can listen to, though you want to believe that it’s not the case.

And while the boy himself doesn’t speak to you the same way you do to him, you learn a little bit about him every time. You learn of his aversion to iron, when you brandish your axe one day and he recoils, not unlike how he had recoiled from the Wort, and you remember your mother’s iron brooch and why she had made you take it with you. You learn of his quick and stealthy hands, able to steal anything in your satchel from right under your nose, with you becoming aware that something is missing only when he holds it in his hands with something close to triumph in his expression. Upon closer inspection, you learn of the thorns all across his body, not as abundant as a rose bush, but they’re there. You feel them when you try to reach out, when you try to hold anything other than the hand he willingly gives to you. They prick you when you get too close, sometimes even drawing blood when you’re not careful, but you know that he doesn’t mean any harm and although his thorns sting and his touch is cold, his hand is always gentle when it holds on to yours.

You’re sorry whenever you have to leave, whenever your duties and responsibilities call you back home before you can tell him everything you’ve been meaning to say, but always, he goes back to the clearing with you, and always, he watches you leave, and you start to think that it’s his way of saying goodbye. No, not goodbye. _See you next time, whenever that is_. And you know, as you leave the woods behind you and prepare your standard list of excuses in your head, that he will be waiting for you in the clearing the next time you pay a visit.

It is a mercy now that time stands still in your village when you are away. Were you to disappear again for another three years, or even more, it would be harder to explain to your mother where you go to while away the long afternoons; where you go when even your closest friends tell her that they have no idea where you are or what you’re doing. You start to feel her keen gaze on you every time you come back home, like an eagle waiting on its perch for the right time to swoop. She doesn’t ask you any questions, doesn’t imply that she notices your strange habits, but you can see in her eyes that she wants to ask you. She wants to understand. But you never allow her to.

The boy and the forest are secrets known only to you and the boy himself, secrets that you guard close to your heart as if it would hurt you if you told anyone else. You come to the conclusion that telling anyone from your village anything about the woods and the boy would be like betraying him and the forest that willingly let you in, as if the boy and the forest would disappear the moment you divulge their secrets to everyone else, so you don’t. You let your mother stew in her curiosity and her suspicions and if anyone else thinks to ask you about it, you give as vague of an answer as you can think of.

Autumn departs with a chill breeze that only promises to get colder when it returns and when you wake up to the first snowfall of the year, you can only think of how cold it must be in the woods without any proper warmth. You purchase a scarf from a passing merchant on the same day, scrounging up what little leaves you had earned from selling some of your concoctions. You pick one the color of deep purple and the merchant teasingly asks you if it’s for your beau. You feel your cheeks flush and you quip back by asking how he knows.

The merchant looks you up and down and smiles knowingly before telling you, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “I know a boy in love when I see it.”

A boy in love.

Are you in love?

The questions sticks to you like a burr to cloak hems as you make the journey across the bridge and to the clearing with the scarf in your hands. You ask yourself as you navigate the now-familiar woods, ducking under stray branches and nearly tripping over rocks covered in snow, _are you in love? Do you even know what it’s like to be in love?_

 _“Are you in love?”_ you want to ask the boy when you finally reach the clearing. _“Do you know what it’s like to love?”_

You don’t get a good answer from him, but something passes across his glowing eyes when you hand him the scarf, when you twirl it around his head and tell him to use it to keep warm, grinning when you realize that purple is the right choice after all. Something stirs in you when he wears the scarf throughout your walk through the forest, and for once, you are quiet, content to watch how the gray snow blankets the entire forest and how, for once, the forest is quiet too, almost as if it had gone to hibernation along with most of its inhabitants. Something inside you grows when you realize that while the boy’s hand is still cold, amid the freezing landscape of winter before you, it is now the warmest thing that you can hold on to in a place like this.

You don’t know if this is love, if this is really what it’s supposed to feel like, but you feel _something_ all the same when you have to leave and you let your hand linger in his for a moment, let your skin remember the bark-like texture of his, let the warmth of your palm chase away the cold in his so that he may be warmer in the coming months, and when you say goodbye, you feel your heart tug, feel your heart race, feel your insides ache as you let go and turn your back on him to return to your village.

You have no way of knowing if this is love because this is not something you have ever felt before. Whatever spell the forest had cast on you to keep you coming back again and again grows stronger, and even more so when you can no longer go back, not until the ice on the river thaws and you start to see green grass again. You have never longed for anything like this, never wanted so badly to see something or someone like this before, and it becomes harder to hide it around your mother who is your only companion in the cold winter months.

You wake up one night from a nightmare, your blanket thrown off and lying on the floor beside your bed, and a shadow passes outside your window so quickly you wonder if it had been real or if it had only been a remnant of your dream. Come the morning, you discover a set of footprints outside your window that lead into the woods, stopping when they reach the tree bridge. You cover them up before your mother can see but night after night, it keeps happening. You wake up from a dream; you never remember what it is or why you sweat so profusely underneath your clothes. You see a shadow through your window, clearer on some nights than most, then you see footsteps that start at the tree bridge and end right outside your window.

You discover one day while wiping away the traces that the lock holding your window closed is made of iron and is really nothing more but a latch, easily lifted by human hands. So easy, in fact, that you manage to flip it open one night without your mother’s notice. And if your mother notices that salt no longer adorns your windowsill, then you can always blame the latch and the strong winter winds it lets in.

When you wake from your dream that night, the shadow is still there and the window stands half open, the glass fogging up where one tree branch-like hand is pressed against it. You push yourself up out of bed and throw the window open to let him in, grabbing hold of his hand to guide him inside. It’s surreal to see him inside like this when he has always belonged in the woods and he looks lost outside of it. But his white hair glows brighter than any light in the dimness of your room and his eyes are like beacons calling to you from across a distant ocean, and you, the hapless sailor so easily drawn to them.

He closes the distance between you before you can, throwing all caution to the wind as he presses his cold lips against yours, closed and pure and laughable because it cannot be more obvious that he is only imitating what he sees others do without actually knowing what it is. You laugh into the kiss, smile despite the metallic taste against your mouth, and you show him how it is done, unwinding the tattered scarf from around his shoulders. 

It is a long process and even you are unsure of what you’re doing, but you wield what little experience you have as best as you can and in the end, you believe that it’s worth it to see him come undone, to hold him closer than you ever thought you could, to feel his heartbeat against yours and know for certain that he has a heart deep inside him and that it beats just as strongly as yours. You taste blood on your tongue and more than once, his thorns and his antlers scratch you and get in the way, but somehow, you manage and you think, as you lie in the dark holding him, watching the sky outside your window turn the pale gray of dawn, that perhaps love is wanting to know his name and wanting him to know yours.

He is gone when you wake. Your window is closed and what little of your body that you hadn’t thought to cover up is freezing. The inside of your room smells like dead leaves and old blood. You don’t say a word to your mother over breakfast, even as you sit and wonder if she heard anything of last night, but her eyes follow you with a strange kind of look to them. No longer just a worried curiosity, but a look of resignation. When you go out to cover his tracks, you’re surprised to find the snow empty and when you go to close the latch on your window, you find it already in place. Almost as if the visitation had never happened.

He doesn’t come to see you for the rest of the winter. No matter how many times you keep your window unlatched, how many times you conveniently forget to pour salt on your windowsill, no matter how many times you check the snow for footprints, he doesn’t come. The dreams stop as well and you no longer wake to shadows outside your window.

You don’t know how you survive the winter without him when every single organ inside your body is tearing you apart with the thought of him. You understand now why people go mad for love because that is exactly what is happening to you. You feel it like a parasite eating you up from the inside, little by little every day until it consumes you whole with want, with need, with the urge to run outside and keep running until you reach the clearing, until you’re in his arms and you can finally know rest.

Your mother looks more and more alarmed each day when you rise out of bed with dark shadows underneath your bloodshot eyes and no appetite for the food she lays out before you. You sit by the window and stare out towards the woods, out towards where you can just fool yourself into believing you can see the glow of his eyes watching you still from the forest. But every time you rise from your seat, every time you feel the embers of hope spread from deep within you, a feeling you had no idea you could still feel, you discover that it is only a trick of the snow, a cruel illusion that mocks and derides you every time you fall for it.

You grow impatient and irritable, sometimes even cruel where once you had been kind, as you can think of nothing but the shine of his eyes and how the dark red tips of his antlers look like dried blood. The smell inside your room fades with time but you still remember the scent – like petrichor and decay, like blood and ruin.

You grow thin and weak, nourished by nothing but your own obsession, and you relish the cold. You seek it out, crouching in the darkest corners of the house where the light hardly reaches, till your skin grows pale like the snow outside and your face starts to look gaunt and ghastly.

And then one day it becomes too much for your mother. She goes down on her knees in front of you and takes both of your thin hands into hers. You flinch – her hands are too warm. You try to pull away but she keeps a firm grip, tightens her fingers around your hand till it feels like she could break your brittle bones, and you are forced to look at her, forced to see the pity and desperation on her face, the tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

She reaches for something on your neck and your skin burns where she touches you with the barest brush of her fingers. “You have been marked,” she says grimly as she presses her fingers against your skin again. It stings like a bruise, like a scratch, and when you hiss in reaction, you hardly recognize your own voice.

“You don’t belong here anymore,” she says and the same resignation you had seen in her eyes the first time is there again. “You belong to the woods now and the one who lives there.” She sighs and looks down. “The offering was supposed to keep him away. Keep him satisfied and keep you safe. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

She strokes your cheek and when you meet her eyes, you see her for the first time in a long time. Recognition lights up your eyes and you lay a feeble hand over hers. “If you had kept me away,” you croak in a hoarse voice, “I would have still found a way to go to him. He loves me.” And there is no uncertainty in your words, no lie that you can detect.

Your mother smiles, bitter and wry. “Then go to him.”

She pulls you up by the shoulders and leads you outside. The daylight almost blinds your eyes but when you look ahead towards the forest, you see nothing else. You turn back to look at your mother for the last time. There are tears in her eyes but she wipes them away with a hand.

“What about you?” you ask.

“I’ll be okay,” your mother says. “Once you’ve been enchanted by the woods, there is nothing you can do to reverse it. You can longer live among humans like us. But if he really loves you, then he won’t hurt you and he’ll let you stay.”

You nod and you’re already moving towards the woods, already taking the first steps toward it, already eager to be away from the village you had called your home for all of your life. Your mother watches you go from the doorway, waving even as you don’t wave back. You reach the edge of the woods and you turn back to look at her one last time but she has already closed the door behind her.

After that, there is no more hesitation. You walk past the only part of the forest the village children are allowed to play in and where once you had played with your friends, past the giant rock with the chiseled names you can no longer read, across the mossy tree older than the village itself and over the frozen brook, and deeper and deeper into the woods until you reach the clearing where it is no longer winter. Here, the grass is green, the boughs of the trees are not bare but full of leaves, and the wildflowers stand proud and vibrant.

You smell the blood before you see him. He emerges from the opposite end of the clearing as if he had been waiting for your arrival, wearing the scarf you had given him. You meet each other at the center of the clearing and it’s like the first sight of sunlight after days of darkness. Your hands reach for the cold of his and when you feel them against yours, it feels like the solace you’ve been searching for.

He reaches out and touches your neck where your mother had touched it but you feel no sting, no bruise. Only the familiar roughness of his hand and the wonderful iciness of his touch. You cannot see for yourself if there truly is a mark there, but whether there is or not, it changes nothing about what you already know.

“I’m yours,” you say and then you tell him your name.

Something flashes in his eyes, a knowing look perhaps, or something sinister that you had never considered before. The metallic smell grows stronger and when he flashes you a smile for the first time, you see the sharpness of his teeth and the traces of blood there. You remember for the first time in years the sound of his chewing, the tearing of the flesh, the scent of new blood and old blood mixing in the air around him, as old as the trees and the ground you walked with him.

But you have already told him your name. He holds it now in his hands and without saying it aloud, suddenly you know his. It passes unspoken between your eyes like a beam and you think, _this must be love_.

He is leaning forward now, moving towards your face, and instinctively you close your eyes. The last thing you see are his eyes, always that enchanting green – like emeralds, like fresh leaves, like the forest he calls home. His hand, always that gentle cold, holding you by the neck and digging into your skin. You feel something sharp on your face, a prick like a needle, but just as you wince in pain, you feel the softness of his lips and you think, it is just a kiss. It is how he greets you and welcomes you to your new home.

It has always been him, you realize. The force that calls you back to the woods time and again, the eyes that follow you through the forest, the shadow that watches over you while you sleep. The boy who had led you home that fateful day you had gotten lost had loved you from the start.

For why else would you be here if you weren’t certain that he loves you? What else can the blood on his teeth, the hunger in his gaze, the force in his grip mean?

What else can it be if not love?

**Author's Note:**

> so is it a story of love, or a story of hunger?
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> i'd love to hear your theories or thoughts!! cause even i wasn't entirely sure where i was going with this while writing it AKSKFKJ. follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kalihimpan) if you want to see more of my writing or updates/wips/what-have-you on my other octopath series. i promise i have happier stories in store for these two akjdhsj
> 
> as always, kudos and comments go a long way in motivating me to write more so please let me know if you enjoyed reading this!! thanks!!


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